Customer Reviews

The Best Of Hootenanny

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3 star:		(1)
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Over the past years, we 've become very accustomed to the pristine digital sound and high-def images of the modern DVD. As such, the not-so-sharp black-and-white images and less-than-perfect sound quality of this DVD might turn off some audio/video purists. [The sound and picture are not bad by any means; they are just not up to modern-day standards.]

I am not such a purist, so I was easily transported back to Saturday nights in 1963 and 1964 watching "Hootenany" on the old black-and-white TV. Jack Linkletter was an affable enough host, who would give a brief plug for the college campus they were on and then introduce the folk acts. Most of the major folk acts were there and did two songs at a time: The Chad Mitchell Trio, the Limeliters, the Brothers Four, Judy Collins, Bob Gibson, Theodore Bikel, Joe and Eddie, Ian and Sylvia, the Travelers Three, the New Christy Minstrels, et al.

The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary were not on the show. The story I always heard was that it was in protest for Pete Seeger not being allowed on the show (because of his McCarthy-era blacklisting). Or maybe they just didn't need the exposure Hootenany gave the other acts. Given that the show did allow the Chad Mitchell Trio to do their famous broadside "The John Birch Society" (it's on the DVD), apparently the producers weren't that afraid of offending the right-wing nuts of the day.

It's fun to contrast the acts on the show with current acts that one sees on Saturday Night Live, Leno, Letterman, etc. Nowadays, the performers all sing and play into their own mikes, wear T-shirts and jeans, and have scruffy hair. Back then on the Hootenany show, almost all the performers in a group sang and played their guitars into a single mike; all the men wore white shirts, skinny ties, and sport coats (or Mr. Rogers-type sweaters), and the women all wore dresses; and they all have short hair. (I'm not passing judgement on either era; I was just amused by the contrast.)

The acts included a mix of mostly folk, with some bluegrass (e.g., Flatt and Scruggs and the Dillards), gospel (e.g., Clara Ward Singers), old-timey (e.g., the Carter Family), blues (e.g., Leon Bibb), and comedy (e.g., Woody Allen and Vaughn Meader doing his famous John Kennedy spoof -- pre-assassination, of course).

On many of the songs, the audience was invited to sing along (after all, it was billed as a hootenany). As a graying baby-boomer, it was a lot of fun for me to relive the innocence and optimism of the early 60's before the assassinations, the war, the riots, Watergate, the culture clashes, etc. It was just a lot fun.

I can't agree with the above product detail: the only thing that hasn't transcended time in the production and content of these discs is that it appears that there are next to no minorities in the audience, though the mix of ethnic groups on stage, or in the spotlight, is inevitable. Even at that early stage in the Civil Rights era, *talent* often found a way.
"Hootenany" was to Folk Music what "Shindig" was to Rock & Roll/Rock and both shows lasted two years. Both were superbly energetic showcases of styles and featured well-known and upcoming stars.
Some viewers might be surprised by the appearance of the new, intellectual stand-up comedians who found a place in the proceedings: Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Louis Nye, a Steve Allen exponent, who nonetheless transcended the Tonight Show slickness with a very funny, though overlong, character bit; Jackie Vernon, the poker-faced precursor of Rodney D., had some good stuff, too. Nothing to knock you over, but enough to get an affirmative nod from Lenny Bruce. The best is Vaughn Meader, in his Classic JFK imitation and insightful (apparently) unrehearsed answers to questions from the audience.
The eclectic list is too long to recite, so let's say highlights are the segments with Marion Williams, Ian And Sylvia, The Rooftop Singers (sorry, no "Walk Right In"), Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, Johnny Cash (at the early end of performance decline which would work itself out in a few years), the Simon Sisters, Doc Watson...
Although we are watching kinescopes, the original technical direction is actually much better than what we have today - the hyperactive cameras spend 95% of the time on the performers, unlike this 1963-64 program where the happy, appreciative, and studious attendees make it an *experience*.

This is one of those shows that should be on DVD because it has become a cultural relic of the Kennedy years when there was a folk music boon. Where else can you see a very young Vaughn Meader, Judy Collins, Woody Allen, and the Chad Mitchell trio in one show? It was innocent, squeaky clean, and brought back a lot of memories. This captures a unique moment when middle class america was discovering its own folk music tradition and relishing it. Not great entertainment but a wonderfully nostalgic peek back in time. Some will be bored by this; others will think that they ar ein heaven.

I was 9 when Hootenanny came on the air but I remember it to this day. Through the years I've looked for it in DVD collections of old TV programs, etc., to no avail until now. The music is as enchanting and fun as I'd remembered it, but what a delight to re-discover acts who did not go on to become household names, and to see comedy performances by a very young Woody Allen and Bill Cosby.

These were "real" concerts, where the crowd was close enough to touch the performers and for the performers to get an instant read of the audience reaction. No break-the-eardrum sound systems, no pyrotechnics, no prancing and preening across the stage in outrageous costumes ... just the fans, the performers and the music. Pure and simple. What a joy!

Ron

This was my teenage music. I love to sing along with the harmonies of Folk ballads and the singers. It is still my favorite music and these DVDs are the best collection I have seen. All I have otherwise is 200 LP records and a single record turntable. I love the video with these songs.

In the Spring of 1963, when ABC was the upstart ugly stepsister (read: FOX network) of broadcast TV, its programming heads would try anything to garner ratings away from venerable NBC and CBS, all to try to get their meager affiliate base off of UHF channels. Someone very groovy and cool decided it would be a good idea to try to introduce middle America to the powerful music and satiric humor of the growing civil rights and anti-war movements. The result was the remarkable but short-lived show called "Hootenanny." It survived almost two years.

I loved it, even at eleven, and even not catching all of the clever allusions and biting ironies of the lyrics and stand-up patter. And I can say to this day, Hootenanny helped me define the boundaries of my worldview, proving once and for all that music and comedy can save the world.

What was "Hootenanny"? The airing of live, spontaneous, in-the-round concerts from college campuses, featuring wily, winsome protest songs, acoustic virtuosos on banjo and guitar and on the harmonica (think: before the British invasion and before the dominance of amplified sound), reviving as well as reliving traditional American folk ballads and Negro spirituals drawn from underground railroad days, all the while demonstrating fearlessness in tweaking the establishment through topical humor.

What prompts this reverential reverie? The fact that somebody very groovy and cool at The Shout! Factory saw fit to resurrect the silvery kinescopes of this inimitable 60s show and sell them as a 3 DVD "greatest hits" set. This is pre-videotape, mind you, so the residue of their rescue efforts is grainy, rough cut (remember, this was live TV), and monophonic. But gloriously black and white and improbably moving.

Hosted by All-American, cardigan-sweatered, perpetually smiling Jack Linkletter, the son of then ubiquitously famous TV personality and host, Art Linkletter, Hootenanny featured his intrusively earnest voiceovers introducing the proverbial, now stereotyped, "singer-slash-sensitive-slash-songwriter" artists and duos and trios and quartets on campuses from coast to coast. Hootenanny focused ABC's minor key audience unabashedly on youth (as "collegiate") culture and conscience, an antidote to the "graying of America" prophesied by many dour social prophets in the post WWII era.

Indeed, Hootenanny arrived near the end of Camelot (the JFK years), an era of high optimism ("a man on the moon before the end of the decade!"); my aging junior high in Akron, OH even got into the act, albeit a little too late to be hip, even by Akron standards. Without Hootenanny, nobody could possibly grasp the magnificent mimicry of Christopher Guest's A Mighty Wind, nor should they try. Hootenanny was somewhat the tv equivalent of a one-hit wonder: imagine- a live concert every Saturday (or, after a ratings drop, Tuesday), holding up a savage mirror to docile, peace-time Americans to reveal their seething racism and militarism? Preposterous!

The cavalcade of quality, legendary performers-before-they-were-stars who appeared on Hootenanny is astonishing and includes the following: Johnny Cash, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Jimmie Rodgers, Miriam Makeba, Barry McGuire (New Christy Minstrels lead singer), John Philips (late of the Mamas and the Papas), and Trini Lopez. What they sung is the soundtrack for most socially conscious grown-ups of the era: If I Had a Hammer, Marching to Pretoria, Kumbayah, Michael, Row the Boat Ashore, Turn, Turn, Turn, and Kisses Sweeter Than Wine.

Here, on network TV, are Ian and Sylvia, the great Canadian duo, singing "Jesus met the woman at the well," free of cynicism, and The Chad Mitchell Trio mocking the radical right-wing "John Birch Society" in an eponymous song that cost ABC some sponsors no doubt. There is something wonderfully archaic yet oddly contemporary about these three discs that commend themselves to the wistful and melancholy among us babyboomer romantics who had their own, unique "summer of love" four years before Sgt. Pepper.

Besides the music, the first episodes capture the spectacle of what campus audiences in 1963 looked like: amazingly "clean-cut" boys and well-coiffed "coeds" fill the bleachers and the deck chairs around the stage, unashamed to "sing along" and "clap their hands" when instructed to do so. Most of them, maybe all of them, do.

But then, this is before the "day the music died" (when Jack Kennedy is shot in Dallas), and before the Birmingham church bombing that killed the four little girls. And it's certainly before the ordeal of Viet Nam grows to its alienating peak.

The Best of Hootenanny lets us look through the window panes of history to help us glimpse a time when entertainment could also be edifying, TV could nearly be epoch-making, and deeply-felt lyrics could be more than merely electrifying, even though it was all quite unplugged.

Originally appearing in The Pseudobook Review. This is reproduced here with permission.

I first borrowed these disks from Netflix then bought them. The 60s folk scene had a lot of different faces, from the Carter Family, to The Chad Mitchel Trio who didn't play instruments and did play sophisticated material. All are on these disks. "Hootenany" was a very popular show in 1963 and 1964, until folk music generally was swamped by the British Invasion. On these disks they are all at or near their best. In addition to American Folk, there are the Clancy Brothers, Miriam Makeba, Flatt and Scrugg's Bluegrass and very good gospel. In addition there is comedy from Louis Nye and Vaughn Meador.

Hootenanny is a cultural icon. The program was broadcast from various stages across the country. Offering the best music could offer, but the networks did a bbaaaadd thing. After each episode aired, they taped over the film. Reused the same film over and over. Naturally they were a few episodes ahead of each other, so a small number of them still exist. The means by which the network recorded the programs and telecast them was top-notch at the time, but considered primitive by today's standards. Think of it as recording a show of TV thirty years ago on a Beta machine, and learning you have the only existing copy of that broadcast. The quality is not remastered and restored to appear as if the masters were filmed yesterday ... and they never will be. They can only do with what they have and use th ebets technology money can afford. I have four episodes myself transferred from original studio tapes and I have to admit the print quality for these DVDs is superior compared. If you are expecting the best gorgeous prints ever seen in your life, you'll be shaking hands with Saint Peter first. If you want to enjoy these for what they are ... musical entertainment ... go for it. Worth every dollar I paid for these.

I was so excited to see this offering that I wasted no time in ordering it and in playing it once received. I loved Hootenanny and having graduated from high school in the early 60's it was almost a part of a rite of passage. Imagine my amazement and that of my husband when his picture showed up on the screen. Oh my!! Talk about a return trip. Even though these discs are all in black and white as the show was it is still as refreshing and exciting as it was then - and maybe even better than it would be in color. Everyone was young and life was exciting and the future looked so great - it is good to be reminded.

Although the kinescopes are grainy and the sound suspect, the material itself is an essential link between the rock and roll explosion of the late 1950s and the British Invasion of 1964. Like Dylan's autobiographical book and DVD, these performances illuminate the short reign of Folk Music as Pop Music. And the Vaughn Meader comedic performance as JFK, well, as Lenny Bruce said, "Poor Vaughn Meader".